On 5/23/07, Brent L. Bates blbates@vigyan.com wrote:
We had a similar problem. I believe there was an error message in oursystem log files that pointed to the solution. I logged in remotely and deleted a problem file. I'm not 100% sure what the file was, but I think it was something like .ICEauthority or a variation on it. Some how the file got corrupted and when root tried to login, it was quickly kicked out. I hope this helps some. Good luck.
Well, I tried .dmrc, .ICEauthority and .Xauthority and none of them appear to be responsible. (I renamed each one to .old, tried a login, failed, and renamed them back.)
As far as I can tell, this affects ALL non root users on the system. I can log in remotely, or as root (remotely or directly via gdm), but not via gdm as a non-root user.
Also, I cannot manipulate passwords at all. When I try to set a user password using the users and groups applet, it hangs. When I try to set a user password from the root login via passwd <user>, I always get an authentication failure.
Does that clarify the problem to anyone else?